Have you ever tried to explain to a friend, who has never visited, about your home town? It can be a bit disconcerting when you start to describe what for you is so familiar and heart warming, and you look up to see descending over your friend’s eyes a haze, the eyelids starting to droop,…

Have you had any trouble with darnel lately? It seems to me that this inquiry might bring a big question to our mind. What is it? What does it look like? Does it itch? Will “Head and Shoulders” get rid of it? When we read the Gospel lesson for today, it is difficult for us….

The “parable of the sower” is one of the special parables in the New Testament because Jesus interprets it for us himself. A sower went out to sow grain, presumably wheat, and the seeds were broadcast by hand. So, once the seeds were thrown, there was no controlling where they would land. The seed fell…

For all the talk recently in our country about “family values,” we find ourselves in a distressingly uncomfortable situation listening to Jesus’ teachings today. How much more startling this Gospel lesson must have seemed to the ancient people to whom Jesus was preaching. They didn’t argue about “family values” as we do. They lived them….

A seminarian, returning from his weekend duties one Sunday afternoon, gave a lift to a hitchhiker and received a theology lesson in return. The hitchhiker, an older man, asked about the seminarian’s clerical collar and interpreted the answer he got to mean that he was, “some kind of preacher.” The hitchhiker then commented that the…

In this text Jesus is filled with compassion and then he puts in a prayer request. For those of us who have years and years of life as serious Christians, this is the most normal of patterns. We are moved to compassion. Then we pray. At the first opportunity we call for prayers from our…

We believe that what this Gospel text is telling us is that if we want to be one of Jesus’ friends we must be sinners. In fact, Jesus said, “I did not come to the virtuous, but sinners.” Since most of us are sinners and since most of us sinners don’t really enjoy hanging out…